Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Look. I know. I KNOW. Putting up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving is a sin that is only eclipsed by murder in severity.

I know that. You guys. I helped vote for that rule. I canvassed and everything. When they sent us those forms in the mail asking us to rank the top five worst sins in order, I even putting this one in front of Choosing To Be Gay.

When I see Christmas decor at stores in October, I ask to speak to the manager. I even hold a purse under my arm and wear a Bump It in my hair when I do it.

I consider myself on the front lines of the War on Christmas up until December 1 every year. I go to all of the secret meetings. Remember when Starbucks changed its holiday cup to be less overtly about Christmas and all of your uncles who have never gone to Starbucks in their lives posted about their boycott decision on Facebook?

That was MY idea.

But you guys. I was bored and we are going to Portland for Thanksgiving and so I decided I wanted to come back to a house that already had its Christmas decorations up.

Saturday, November 17, 2018

This week, I have a story from when I was 11 years old. I can't believe I waited this long to tell it to you. You can hear it on Strangerville this week, and I've included the text below.

Also, I'm supposed to remind you to go leave us a review on iTunes or your podcast app of choice, if you haven't already. The reviews help us exponentially. Really. Seriously. Even one extra review will make our day and put Meg into labor, which she wants. I'm not kidding.

Please enjoy.

*****

This time in Strangerville, Meg and Eli discuss “the levels of Mormonism.” Meg agrees to let Eli deliver her baby. And an 11-year-old boy participates in a wild mock trial.

Story:

Mock Trial, by Eli McCann

Production by Eli McCann and Preg Walter

The O.J. Simpson trial happened in 1995. Anyone who was alive and cognizant then probably recalls that for the better part of that year, no one talked about anything other than the O.J. Simpson trial.

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Make sure to check out Jolyn's new story on Strangerville, if you haven't yet!

*****

I was riding on the Subway when I heard something that hurt my ears. It came from a woman's mouth. She was in her 50s. Pleasant-looking and probably kind. So that's why it caught me so off guard.

"Larry," she said to the man sitting next to her, a man who looked exactly like her but bald, so I assumed they were married, "did you get a good pitcher of the Empire State Building?"

No. She wasn't asking if he had purchased a pitcher in the shape of the thing. She clearly meant "picture." You know. That word that has the letter C in the middle of it and is not even remotely similar in meaning to the word this woman had said.

It caught me off guard that she would say such a thing because I firmly believe that saying "pitcher" when you mean "picture" actually makes you a bad person. And she just didn't look like a bad person.

I mean, I'm not saying that doing this makes you truly evil. On the scale of indiscretions, this habit would fall exactly between sitting through a green light with a row of cars behind you and first degree murder of a pretty child. So, no, it won't necessarily send you straight to hell, but it will necessarily make you possibly deserve it.

Sunday, November 11, 2018

I got to New York City a few days ago because my law firm decided that I should go to this training class.

I decided not to be offended by the suggestion, even though the class is really meant for people who are pretty recently out of law school. It's a deposition class where we spend several days taking mock depositions of fake witnesses while a panel of teachers snorts coffee and probably cocaine to try to stay awake long enough to give feedback because, as it turns out, there is something more boring than a deposition and that is a mock deposition.

It's not all bad. And the less cynical version of myself, the one that sometimes gets enough sleep and doesn't have shingles, would probably admit that the class is really helpful. This, despite the fact that a good portion of it is geared at explaining to the students what a deposition is in the first place, which might have been helpful to hear before I took eleventy depositions over the mumble-mumble years since I finished law school.

Obviously my main objective when walking into the class on the first day was to become as popular as possible because my popularity is an exact measure of my self-worth. And so I positioned myself to make all of the right jokes in all of the right places in front of all of the right people.

But because the class is really geared toward people who pretty recently finished law school, I'm a solid decade older than nearly everyone there, which is not a big deal if you're, like 75, but which is a surprisingly big deal if you're say 34.

Tuesday, November 6, 2018

I noticed this tender bump on the back of my head sometime last week so obviously that meant that I was dying.

Meg says she's a hypochondriac. She claims to have mastered this.

Meg Walter is an amateur.

I once saw a bug bite on my hip, convinced myself that I had bedbugs, and not just regular bedbugs, poisonous bedbugs, hyperventilated, fainted at 2:00 in the morning, and then had to spend the next two weeks hooked up to a portable heart monitor so the doctor could confirm that I didn't have heart disease.

I single-handedly crashed the American healthcare system that year.

By Sunday I was convinced that it was a tumor/leprosy/bedbug-heart-disease, and so that's when I went to urgent care.

Having been around the block a few times now, I'm much more competent when dealing with my hypochondria today than I was during the bug bite situation. That's the only way I was possibly able to wait all the way until Sunday before seeing a doctor. What with my body aches, extreme fatigue, nausea, and every other symptom listed on WebMD under "things a sick human can experience."

Sunday, November 4, 2018

He hasn't attempted to murder me or Skylar, to our knowledge. This is good, because I place my life in his paws every day. If Duncan suddenly wanted me dead, you all would be looking for a new place on the Internet to read subliminal messages about competitive PTA races by tomorrow morning. All he would have to do is put cyanide in my soup. And I know. I could decrease the likelihood of this happening by locking the cyanide closet in my house or taking him off of the cooking rotation, but I don't need to. Because Duncan doesn't seem interested in killing me.

He does seem interested in killing many other people, though. Mostly people on wheels.

We take Duncan for a walk every day to the college campus by my house. Duncan loves this activity more than any of you love your mothers. He loves it so much that if he hears us say the word "walk," he has to be sedated.

This is such a problem that we have developed a truly subconscious practice of spelling out the word if ever we have cause to say it. So subconscious, in fact, that two weeks ago I spelled it in a work meeting and then had to explain why I was spelling the word in a hushed voice like it was a swear.

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

I'm not saying these are the best films of all-time. There are many movies that I think are much greater than these, but that I could only watch once.

This post pays tribute to the movies I could watch over and over. The kind of movie you might flip on to have in the background while cleaning the house. I present these, aggressively-unapologetically, in no particular order.

1. You've Got Mail

Look. I don't care what you say. It's a nearly perfect film. I watch it every Thanksgiving morning while I cook pies that my family definitely won't eat. I could quote the entire movie at you, word-for-word from the opening line all the way to the part where Meg Ryan says "I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly."

Sunday, October 28, 2018

Halloween is a stressful day for me because I so want it to go well but it pretty much never goes well.

I want to live in that neighborhood from the movies where all of the kids are out in traditional Halloween costumes, marching up leaf-fallen pathways to Victorian brick houses, adorned with intricate pumpkin carvings and emitting smells of hot cider. That's all I want. Not much to ask for.

But that's not how it goes on my street.

The houses are dark, almost comically so. Windows are practically boarded. My first Halloween in my home I had about 4 trick-or-treaters.

It's gotten slightly better since then, probably only because I have aggressively shouted children down as I've seen them passing my street to move on to friendlier territory, convincing them to come over.

I never planned to be a man in his thirties screaming at kids to come to his house for candy, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Last year, thanks largely to my Halloween advocacy, I had nearly 30 trick-or-treaters. At least two of those were full-fledged adults, out without any children, but they were wearing costumes so I rewarded their commitment to sugar.

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

"You have rats," The Perfects informed me, standing on my driveway as I fumbled with some grocery sacks from the back seat of my car.

The only one who was happy with this news was Duncan, who is brave only in the "hold me back" kind of way.

He turns into a vicious and rabid dog, while in the comfort of his own home, every time he sees a cat cross by the living room window. But when he saw one up close at Skylar's parents' house last Christmas, he quickly devolved into a nervous breakdown.

You wouldn't believe the therapy bills.

As soon as he discovered the rat or rats a day or two after The Perfects's's disclosure, he was in heaven, primarily because the rat had no interest in confrontation, so Duncan could look like a badass without ever having to fight the creature.

I knew that The Perfects didn't mean for the news to sound like an accusation, but I'm accustomed to translating everything that comes from their benevolent mouths into a certain tone and context.

Sunday, October 21, 2018

Have I bragged about how good our last Strangerville live show was? I have? Well, one of the reasons it was so great was because of Whitney Call, who closed out the night with one of the most beautifully-written stories I have read in years.

Check out the recording of her story on today's Strangerville; I would also strongly recommend that you read it below. This is a story worth experiencing both ways.

This time in Strangerville, Meg’s dog needs a therapist. And Whitney Call reminds us how hard it is to be 9 years old.